


Not the Same

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Andromeda, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that never happened to Seamus Harper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Same

  
1.  Portobello

  
He doesn't wait.  He takes off through the stalls and antique shops,  
running hard without his shoes, skidding on the ice.  A London winter  
is like a Boston winter, really.  It's just the smog that smells  
different, and the different whiff of bodies at the city's edge.

Two Ubers turn toward him, and he doesn't wait to see whether they're  
looking for him or for nineteenth century German furniture.  There's a  
fashion for it, an industry unto itself, and he just knows there are  
humans somewhere whose job it is to strip all those desks down and  
refinish them in something stronger than the original wood.  Chemicals  
that eat your skin.  He can picture the scars.

The London Guide soft behind his ear whispers architectural history  
and describes every piece of junk Harper's eyes focus on for more than  
half a second.  When he gets sick of the noise, he lets his eyes blur  
across everything that's not alive.  Just now and then, he slips and  
skids and while he's getting his feet back and grounding himself, the  
London Guide tells him about jewellery and books and the Blitz and  
strange, strange movies.  Eventually, it understands that he doesn't  
care and starts singing, softly.  More lists, but tuneful and weird.    
Harper thinks someday he'll learn to fake that accent.

A foot slams into his midsection and sends him skidding over the ice.    
Cobblestones underneath make hash of his palms.  The London Guide  
knocks loose from his port and shuts up.  The new focus he gains with  
the voice gone makes him dizzy.

And then he's on his back.  Shaking and pretending not to.  Whispering  
the song the Guide taught him.  *Street where the riches of ages are  
sold...*  The gun points close at his face.

The ground settles back under his feet when the big, braided Uber puts  
him onto it with just one hand on his arm.  Stands there in his  
leather and chainmail like he isn't freezing cold.  Harper rubs his  
head and under the gesture pushes the London Guide back into his  
port.

It says, "The Smoke..."

Rebecca Valentine steps around the Uber.  She looks Harper over, then  
opens her phone and says, "I've found him."  Closes it.  Harper can  
see his reflection in the lenses that rise out of her skin to cover  
her eyes.

She says, "Dylan wants to talk to you."

*

2\. A Promise from a Man Who Sheds His Skin

  
He didn't expect it to be like this.

He's nearly been eaten by space monsters and Magog larvae.  Most of  
his life's been spent cultivating an aura of "probably poisonous,  
certainly bad for the digestive system."  He smells funny for a  
reason.

It's got his feet.

He knows songs about this, even.  Stuff one of his cousins taught him,  
some afternoon in the smoggy ditches of Boston.  It came up after "A  
Boy Named Sue."  Just about nonsense, not quite.  The biggest snakes  
he's ever seen were the garters they caught between the stones and  
cooked.  Long, thin strips of meat that were the only protein he had  
for the first three or four years of his life.

It's probably karma.

It's got his legs.

If he could unhinge his jaw like that, he could take the arm off the  
next great big ugly who grabs him.

It's got his waist.  And his super-special Harper parts.

At least it's Dylan's fault.  'Play the host, Harper.'  'It's not  
taking up much room, Harper.'  'What's it going to do, Harper, eat  
your toolbox?'

Yeah, it's hilarious.

It's up to his chest.  He thinks about spreading his arms wider just  
to see how far open that unhinged jaw will go.

He yells one more time.  Nobody answers.  All of them at the reception  
that he wasn't invited to, just because he got the Perseid delegate  
drunk last time.  Rommie's running a virus scan.  Tyr's nine decks  
away.

In space, no one can hear you scream even if you spend a lot of time  
maintaining an atmosphere for the sole purpose of being heard.

It's up to his neck, and he really is impressed at how wide those jaws  
could stretch.

Sometime after it's up past his head, he stops screaming.  He has  
*tools*.  He has a *nanowelder.*

Inside the boa constrictor, Harper thinks about all the amazing things  
he can do next.

*

3.  Dingoes

  
He doesn't think about it that much at the time.  The bar's dark, with  
a live band and some kind of beer that's mostly caffeine.  Harper's in  
heaven, probably, or he would be if just a few lovelies weren't  
turning him down.

The band distracts him, eventually.  They're not that good, but the  
boy on lead guitar has a serious focus that Harper appreciates.  Their  
music's a rough mix of old Earth fragments, covers of songs whose  
originals are long lost, and vaguely post-neo-punk howling.  The lead  
singer's wearing layers of eye makeup and twisting himself at the  
stand-up microphone.  It's interestingly retro in a way that Harper  
appreciates.

Beka's in here somewhere, probably.  After the show, she'll track down  
whoever's in charge of the band's music archive and offer to trade  
copies.  The collection she has now isn't even one percent of what she  
had when Haper met her, but she's made rebuilding it a fun project.    
One of these days Harper'll find Rafe and cut the missing music out of  
his skin.

He doesn't look for her, though, because in the break between sets he  
finds the guitarist.  As small as he is, slight and serious-looking.    
Red tips on his blond hair that probably weren't created by nanobots.    
He's wrapped in a couple of layers of band shirts and shredded denim.    
Like any earther Harper's ever met, but younger, cleaner, and  
infinitely less scarred.

The flat-affect shouldn't be the kind of turn-on that it is.  But.    
The boy's concentration is amazing.  They curl up together in back  
booth, not listening to the band play bass-and-drums.  Kissing deep  
and serious while Harper's body makes a loud case in his backbrain for  
finding out if the boy's focus lasts all the way through sex, or  
whether Harper could crack him.  Whether he should find out right  
here.

It's not even hard for him to sink his hand into the boy's jeans.    
Jerking him off is a sweet, fast process that winds the boy up in  
tight knots and gives Harper all the thrill of a gorgeous blond  
twisting across his lap.  Only, just when he comes, the boy curls in  
against Harper's neck, burrows his face in, and bites his shoulder.    
Bright, sharp little teeth that break the skin just where his collar  
normally sits.

"Ow."

"Oh my god.  I'm sorry."  The boy scrambles off and backs away,  
rubbing frantically at his bloody mouth.  "I'm sorry.  I wasn't  
thinking."

"Hey, it's okay.  I'll take it as a compliment.  Just, you know, come  
back here, okay?  I don't think we were done."

"I should go."

"The damage is done, okay?  Make it up to me."

He does.  Then and later, in the band's little wreck of a ship, lined  
with blankets and glimmering clothes and a warm, sweet smell of  
narcotics.  There's a mandala sketched on one wall and a big box of  
what turns out to be actual print books, breaking back down to  
cellulose but being thoroughly loved before they go.

Harper wakes up and the boy's crouched in the corner, watching him.    
Impossibly sad.  "I'm so, so sorry."

"What about?"

"Biting you.  I shouldn't ever --"

"Forget it."

"You won't."

Harper shrugs.  He's found most of his clothes, though he isn't  
totally sure the shirt he's pulled on was his originally.  Part of the  
natural cycle of clothing in the universe.  Andromeda has all his  
faith, and anything he's picked up, Trance can fix.  He's sure of it.

He's not so sure of it a month later, howling at Tyr from a corner of  
his machine shop, able to smell him just *way* too clearly.  At this  
stage he can't even remember what made him angry.  But he's really,  
really not human anymore, and it's scaring the shit out of him, and  
everything smells like *blood* and *mate* and *food*, and then he's  
unconscious.

It takes them three months to get back to the drift.  Rommie looks  
bemused whenever she sees him.  Trance said something that sounded  
unpleasantly like, "It's for the best."  He's learned to hunt small  
rodents in the empty decks of the ship.

The band's back there, too.  Some kind of universal synchronicity.    
Harper wonders whether he should have taken some kind of warning from  
the band name, wild dogs and fresh-meat children.

The boy's curled up in a corner of the empty bar, like he's been  
waiting.  He takes Harper on three jumps, and then down to a dark,  
forested planet.  The air smells like warm animals and cold water.    
There are two small, low moons.

They run for a long time.

*

4.  Vortex

  
The AP tanks develop microfractures two jumps out from Infinity Atoll.    
Any number of people declare that this is Harper's fault, since he was  
the one who made the side trip.  Rommie calls him names in Perseid  
while he crawls through access tunnels with his welder and a radiation  
jacket pulled low over his hips.

He's not really prepared for the hole that opens in front of him.    
Hoone would have appreciated it.  It's a perfect, natural tesseract,  
already closing.

In it, Harper clearly sees every sock he's ever lost.  And his  
favourite jacket, the one Beka said she burned.

He could dive in after them.  He might even get a few things back.    
And he'd be the best-dressed quantum man in the universe.

*

5.  The Lorax on Acid

  
At some point, the Ubers stop chasing him, but it doesn't stop Harper  
from running.  He thinks he might run to San Francisco without ever  
slowing down, that his feet might never touch the ground again, that  
he might reach escape velocity and explode in the vacuum of space.

Boston ends long before he slows down.  He's way out, past the ruins  
and the mess, getting to where he shouldn't be.  They don't know where  
the last Magog raiding party came from.  When the adrenaline rush  
dies, he'll be scared.  Maybe dead.  Maybe worse.  As long as his  
heart's still racing like this, though, he can't stop.  Just duck into  
the woods and hope that nothing finds him before he finds his head.

Miles and miles, and he's desperately hungry and his legs weigh like  
lead.  He catches a couple of mice and skins them.  Eats them  
carefully and cleans his mouth out as best he can without actually  
drinking the water.  He'll have to at some point, but he wants to be a  
long, long way away from Boston before he lets his skin touch anything  
that comes out of the ground.  

Somewhere up in the hills, he doubles over and vomits for a long time.    
He hurts all over.  His feet hurt like a mother of something  
engineered.

He's still on the ground, shaking and puking, when branches grab him.

He hits out but all he gets are new bruises.  Lashes out again with  
one of the metal bits secreted in his jacket.

"Hum.  I think you had better put that down."  Twigs pull it out of  
his hand.  Then flip him over and shake him until the other metal bits  
come loose.  "Little Magog."

"I'm not!  Lemme down!"

"You have no business here."

"I'm not Magog!  Jeez, you can't tell me from a big, hairy thing with  
teeth oh holy fuck you're a tree!"

"I am not a tree."

"No, see, you're a tree and I'm not a Magog and this is obviously how  
you got so confused so how about you put me down and I'll go and we'll  
both be confused by ourselves, okay?"

"I am an Ent."

"I don't eat people or even rape them or anything I'm just a...  
saywhat?"

"I am an Ent."

"Oookay.  I'm human.  So we're clear on that.  What's an Ent?"

"I speak for the trees."

"Yeah?  What do the trees say?"

"The trees say that you are far too small to be a man."

"Yeah, I could say you're pretty ugly to be a tree, but I'm not.    
'Cause I have manners."

"You are fully grown?"

"And I don't have *fangs*, so yeah, not a Magog.  Just a regular,  
plain-old human.  On the run from anything that's gonna eat me.  Are  
you?"

"Am I going to eat you?  No.  No.  I may hang you from the trees and  
see what comes, but I will not eat you.  I fear you may be  
contaminated."

"Hey!"

"Gently, little man."

"Put me down!"

"I think you had better come with me.  There are Magog in the woods,  
and I think they would rather enjoy you if you are not one of their  
own."

"I'm not, and yeah.  Okay.  Don't put me down.  Not here."

"I think not.  I think you will grow best far from here.  You are  
thirsty.  Hum.  Come."

He can hear Magog in the far distance, and still all he can think is  
that he's thirsty, and the air smells weirdly clean in a way that  
hurts his sinuses.  Like if he crawled up to the top of this thing, he  
could see through the dirt in the air and all the way to forever.


End file.
